


This Could Be Heaven

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror, Pre-Series Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2019-02-07 18:46:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12847260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: Music drifts cheerfully from the dining hall





	This Could Be Heaven

In the morning, he says to John’s voicemail, _Hey, Dad. Ghost been taken care of. Crossed into Arizona yesterday night, few miles off the 66th near Sanders I think. Got cops on my back after the dig and burn. I’ll be laying low for a while._ He pauses, unsure. _Call me back._

The concierge is missing an eye from his eye socket and a jagged long gouge crosses his faces from temple to neck and gives a peek at the jawbone beneath. Dean tenses, but when the man turns around to hand him the key to his room, his face is smooth skin and a pleasant smile. “We can arrange for a late-night snack,” he says, and Dean’s hungry and he nods and he says he needs a shower first, and he shakes his wet hair and his tired mind and the zombie face and the stench of graveyard that’s making him see things. He stops abruptly when his side protests, blood wet and warm and a long shiver. Man, he’s tired. Hurts like a sonofabitch, too. He hurts like a thick branch tore him through, part to part, split him in two. 

“I hope you find your stay pleasant.” A loud ding is a screaming sound that breaks the tick-tocking silence of the hall, Dean jumps, nerves raw, when a man appears at his side. Big, dark haired and dark clothed, he takes Dean’s bags from his hands before Dean can blink a protest. “Charly will show you your room, sir,” the concierge says. A pause, a large smile empty of teeth, a delighted gleam in his remaining eye is another trick of the light , “We were waiting for you.”

The allure of hot water and a bed is strong and everything has gotten hazy and faded all of a sudden: a tilting drunken world. He turns around and follows Charly through an arched double door, then on the left into a long hallway that has numbered doors on each side. Charly moves slowly and his right leg drags on the carpeted floor and there’s something wrong with the shape of his body, as if the bones can’t hold the flesh and both flesh and clothes are hanging limp like an animated rag-doll. But it must be another trick of the glimmering lights and the pain in his side. Was it a much serious wound? He must have checked himself at some point. 

Charly holds Dean’s bags like they are not heavy with Dean’s guns and weapons, then he puts them on the floor with a dull thump just inside Dean’s room and goes away with some mumbled unintelligible words. Cheerful music comes from somewhere deep down in the hotel. A bit scratchy and old, like John’s old vinyl. There’s a smell of old flowers in his room and a double bed and laced floating curtains on an open window. He face-plants on a soft mattress. Just for a minute.

In the morning, he says to John’s voicemail, _Hey, Dad. Ghost been taken care of. Crossed into Arizona yesterday night, few miles off the 66th near Sanders I think. Got cops on my back after the dig and burn. I’ll be laying low for a while._ He pauses, unsure. _Call me back._

He stretches, lazy and warm under surprisingly soft sheets and fluffy blankets, waits for the wound in his side to abruptly stop the languor in his body, but it never does. Something urgent nags at his mind. A memory or a dream shimmering underwater, diving deeper out of reach as soon as Dean grabs for it. Cheerful music and the stomping of boots over polished wood floor. A kaleidoscope of colorful lights and old wizened faces. Red, pungent drink in his glass. A tinkly sound of laughter and the smell of old flowers. A woman was sobbing in the corner and blood stained her mouth. 

It’s cloudy outside, with yesterday rain and an oncoming storm. Dean doesn’t mind, he closes his eyes and sleeps. Wakes up later, and he checks his watch and then he checks the dark screen of his cell and he gets dressed and follows the voices and a delicious smell of food down the hallway and into the dining room. People are sitting around tables dressed in white. An old man is feeding his wheelchair-bound wife, gently wiping her lips after each spoonful of food. Dean stares at the lower part of her body, at the torn clothes and the mangled legs, drenched in blood up to her side. The husband feeds her another spoon, then gently wipes at her lips.

A touch on his arm. “Are you the newcomer?” the woman asks and doesn’t wait for an answer before she drags him by the hand to a table close to the large bay window, past a boy wearing a black-shirt and arms littered with needle marks and a family of five cheerfully eating their lunch and ignoring that the dad’s missing part of his skull.

“I saw you yesterday night,” she says. Dean doesn’t remember her but he wants to be polite because the woman has sad eyes and bruises around her eyes ad fingers-shaped marks on her neck. She has long hair and red-rimmed eyes and blood drips from her lips when she smiles. “Can I look?” she says. Dean opens his jacket so she can poke at the wound on his side. It’s bigger than Dean remembers, and the edges are jagged and torn like a thick branch crossed him side to side. The hurt is but a memory of empty lungs and the rough surface of a tree against his back.

“You’re going to be okay,” she says before she pats the lapels of his jacket and trails a fleeting caress on his face. Dean eats and he drinks and when his eyes start to droop he falls asleep in a leather armchair looking at the storm raging outside.

Later, before nightfall, Dean calls John. To his voicemail, he says, _Hey, Dad. Ghost been taken care of. Crossed into Arizona yesterday night, few miles off the 66th near Sanders I think. Got cops on my back after the dig and burn. I’ll be laying low for a while…_

Music drifts cheerfully from the dining hall.  
\-- 

**Author's Note:**

> Written for celebratingdean [at] tumblr.


End file.
